Dead in the water?

OffBeatMammal · **29th June 2006, 10:34 PM**

Over at the Inquirer they've got an interesting commentary - Media Centre PCs lie dead in the water.

I had a read expecting to have an opportunity to pour scorn on the author and tell him he didn't know what he was talking about....

Sadly, he talks a lot of sense. Most of us here are smart/technical/brave enough to live with the odd glitches and hiccups but when I'm away my family play DVDs on the xbox360 and if they don't watch shows live don't worry too much about recording them... it's all too complicated.

At the moment my next MCE will be a dedicated PVR simply because I can't trust it to be set and forget (and I know that in many cases people here do have a trouble-free existance, but if we're honest it's probably a lower percentage than trouble-free, say, Topfield PVR users). The current debacle with EPGs (which has driven me to IceTV) doesn't help matters. Actually, I'm not sure if the latest issue with my machine just freezing with no explianation is related to IceTV... I think it only started when I installed that, but that's off topic

I'm hoping and praying that "Vista Ultimate Edition with Extra Bells On" is going to be a panacea... because frankly there's not enough on FTA worth recording anyway at the moment

bella · **29th June 2006, 10:42 PM**

Offbeat: see also: "Media Center PCs lie dead in the water" - discuss

OffBeatMammal · **29th June 2006, 11:32 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by bella

Offbeat: see also: "Media Center PCs lie dead in the water" - discuss

ooops.... I looked to see if anyone had linked to it, didn't think I'd find it in the "introduce yourself" category!

anything · **30th June 2006, 04:04 PM**

in my eyes the only viable Media Center PC system is MCE. MCE is the first attempt at a Media Center frontend so there are bound to be issues, its only been recently that MCE has even worked with HD channels here.

since i've have been running MCE, despite a number of annoyances from drivers and decoders (partly because i want the BEST picture quality) and the EPG situation, its been very stable and never missed a recording.

a PVR may be stable, but can i watch WMV trailers? MOV trailers? look at the weather? check the news? watch divx/xvid? stream music from another PC? stream a DVD from another PC? allow me to remote control music via a PDA? allow me to turn on a projector and amp, set DSP, volume etc with one button press? plus when HDDVD/BluRay arrives i wont have to fork out $1000+

for me the flexibility of a Media Center PC is what puts it ahead of the competition.

personally i think Media Center PC's and PVRs will merge together, taking on stability of the PVR and the features of Media Center PC's.

ExtremePC · **30th June 2006, 08:07 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by anything

in my eyes the only viable Media Center PC system is MCE. MCE is the first attempt at a Media Center frontend so there are bound to be issues, its only been recently that MCE has even worked with HD channels here.

There has been and MCE version of windows since 2002 - 2003. It's not really new for MS at all, they have been plugging away at it for four years already.

bb193 · **30th June 2006, 08:19 PM**

Yes it is sad, isn't it?

I bought my first MCE last Christmas, and have spent months just trying to keep it stable. The shame is, I really don't think it is difficult. I think I'm a fairly typical family user.

Over and above what it has now, I think all I'm looking for are:-

Silent/quiet running for recording TV.
So I don't wake the house when I record something in the small hours. I have a PC with a Motherboard that supports quiet mode - but the necessary ROM upgrade is not going to be produced. If they mistreat the enthusiasts, they destroy their best advertising tool.
Low cost extenders.
Say between £25-£50. This may be less vital if the PC was quiet when playing back, so I could have it in the lounge - but while it sounds like a PC, low cost extenders are vital.
Easy burning of DVDs from recorded shows included in the package.
Sonicencoders is not it.
Greater reliability.
I have learned from bitter experience that, when I have a working setup, I need to take a disk image of my system disk and burn it to a DVD so I can recover quickly. I know this is a complexity normal users coudl do without, but surely it is what Restore is trying to do? So just make Restore work properly.

There is nothing difficult about any of this - it is all available now. They have just decided not to provide it. I like my MCE and am pleased I bought it - but if someone asked me about it, I wouldn't recommend they bought one - unless they need a hobby.

OffBeatMammal · **30th June 2006, 10:12 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by bb193

There is nothing difficult about any of this - it is all available now. They have just decided not to provide it. I like my MCE and am pleased I bought it - but if someone asked me about it, I wouldn't recommend they bought one - unless they need a hobby.

so true!
I think the family are going to suggest we get a Topfield or similar for reliably recording TV and I relegate the MCE to a hobby... even when it seems to be stable and behaves for a few weeks so I take a new disk image.... with no apparent changes it'll go weird on me (and restoring the disk image makes no difference)
I think it's spent more time running disk and RAM diagnostics in the last week that it has recording TV. When it works it's awesome and the way of the future. When it doesn, I just get grumpy!

bb193 · **30th June 2006, 10:51 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by OffBeatMammal

I think the family are going to suggest we get a Topfield

Yes - that does look interesting.

I like the fact that you get all the benefits of a stable recorder - but you can interface it to your PC for extra storage, removing ads, burning to DVD, compressing onto your PDA etc. Just need a wireless connection..... (there's always something else, isn't there?)